a moment in the history of the academy
Michael D. Jackson: Reflections on Copenhagen
Making experience intelligible requires the subjugation of its sensible properties, including sound. Yet we seem to have reached a moment in the history of the academy when this paradigm is giving ground to a new realism where in depth, detailed, direct recountings of experience are considered to be as illuminating, edifying and thoughtful as the experience-distant jargon extolled by the rationalists of the Enlightenment. Arousing emotion, moving a reader, describing the living context in which one’s thoughts unfold, and using artistic devices – narrative, imagery, idiomatic speech, montage – are valid ways of communicating a point of view, making an argument or revealing a truth. It is becoming acceptable to stir or disturb one’s audience in the same way that music or movies do. Rather than distrusting prose that evokes a slice of life, a lived event or a personal experience, we are learning to distrust forms of discourse in which the assertion of authority requires an autocratic manner. We crave sincerity as much as scholarship, direct testimony as much as indirect speech. The world of thought is being brought back to life.
Really?